Roseanne Barr reveals she is going blind

April 21, 2015

Roseanne Barr revealed the news that she is losing her vision. The 62-year-old said
she has
macular degeneration and glaucoma and is dealing with pressure in her eyes.

"My vision is closing in now,"
she
told The Daily Beast. “It’s something weird. But there are
other weird things. That one’s harsh, ’cause I read a lot, and then I thought,
‘Well, I guess I could hire somebody to read for me and read to me.’ But I like
words and I like looking. You do what you have to do. I just try and enjoy
vision as much as possible—y’know, living it up. My dad had it, too.”

Roseanne donned large sunglasses at the premiere of her documentary Photo: Getty Images

The comedian's revelation comes after
the interviewer asked why she openly smoked marijuana in her new documentary
Roseanne for President! "It’s good for me for that because I have
pressure in my eyes," she said of the drug and her condition. "It’s a
good medicine for a lot of things.”

Her particular
condition leads to haziness of vision
and can result in a blind spot in the center of the vision field. Glaucoma
is a group of eye conditions that cause nerve damage. Roseanne simply responded, "yeah," when asked if she will ultimately
go blind, but has no time frame for when that will happen.

The actress revealed she is going blind Photo: Getty Images

Taking a step away from her
well-known
Roseanne character, the actress showed up to the Tribeca Film Festival to support her documentary that follows her
unsuccessful attempt to become the Green Party's 2012 presidential nominee. She eventually became the nominee for the The
Peace and Freedom Party.

Roseanne is happy not to be playing her famous TV character anymore Photo: Getty Images

This project is just one of a few she's done since
her hit show ended in 1997 and she's happy about it. "I like doing small
things," she said. “For a number of years in a big box with no windows. I
was like Rumpelstiltskin. It’s hard in your '60s [to imagine doing] that much
work again. It was boring. I just didn’t want to continue doing that because
there are too many sacrifices to continue it.”